Automated handwriting recognition or intelligent character recognition (hereinafter, “ICR”) generally refers to an automated process for applying optical character recognition (hereinafter, “OCR”) techniques to convert scanned or photographed images of handwritten text into computer-readable text. Conversion to computer-readable text allows for increased ability to edit, search, store, display, use in other processes, etc.
One difficulty with regard to ICR is in the area of character segmentation, which is often an important step in the ICR process. Character segmentation can refer to the process of isolating individual characters or a set of multiple characters from the rest of the image before character recognition. Unfortunately, handwritten characters are subject to certain factors, such as character intersection (e.g. in cursive handwriting), that can greatly degrade character segmentation and, thus, character recognition.
Accordingly, ICR technology may be improved by techniques for efficiently segmenting handwritten characters.